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Amadeus and IHG join forces to shape the future of the hospitality industry
Jeff Edwards
Amadeus Global Hotels Group
English
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In my professional career I have rarely felt as proud as I do this week. I am here at IHG headquarters in Atlanta where I have been spending quite a lot of time over the last few months - if you read yesterday’s announcement by IHG you’ll know why. This week teams from both our companies are gathered as a cross-company, cross-functional and cross-cultural team for a two-day ‘boot-camp’ as we continue to progress on our joint roadmap to build a community model GRS for the hotel industry. We are excited that together we are going to deliver something that is not only transformational but also is much needed in the hospitality industry.
With IHG as our launch partner, Amadeus is building a new cloud-based community model Guest Reservation System. Based upon Amadeus’ successful Airline IT business model, the community model GRS will provide a huge leap forward in the flexibility and functionality available to hoteliers around the world. We are bringing it to market via a hotelier-friendly model, whereby Amadeus takes responsibility for funding and maintaining the reservation system and each hotel chain member, such as IHG, pays for usage on a transaction fee basis.
Built inherently on open technology, all functionalities and features of this GRS are centred around the possibility for hotels to personalise the end-to-end guest experience from the initial inspiration or ‘dream’ phase through to the stay and post-stay phase. It enables highly efficient transaction processing and is significantly easier to deploy and evolve than traditional CRSs. The GRS is built from the outset to be agile in adapting to the always connected guest and in accommodating emerging technologies and guest behaviours and preferences.
IHG is the ideal launch partner for us: they have a long track record of investing in technology to support their brand promise to guests at their 4,800 hotel properties globally and they have a clear vision of what a next generation GRS needs to look like. On our side we are leveraging decades of experience in massive IT projects of this kind and our solid global IT infrastructure for the project. In addition, as we integrate with Newmarket, which Amadeus acquired in 2013, IHG will benefit from Newmarket’s award-winning customer service and an integrated global hospitality support network which is second to none.
So here in Atlanta as we read the news coverage and respond to the many calls we are getting from colleagues across the industry, media and beyond, I’m truly humbled by all of the hard work from both teams and by the deep commitment of Amadeus to truly shaping the future of the hospitality industry. We look forward to others joining us on this journey.
Have a look at the full press releasefor more about this landmark achievement and be sure to check out yesterday’s blog post from Keith Barr, Chief Commercial Officer, IHG.
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